I don't know for sure if he heard me but right after I took off for my first solo flight out of Mesquite, I loudly shouted,

"Yeee-haaw!! Woo-hooo!!"

(What did you expect from a Texan?)

I did three touch-and-goes at Mesquite all by myself. My landings were all great, my patterns were good, my approach was low for one landing but I adjusted fine. It was a great feeling to finally fly alone. And eerily quite without the company.

After my last landing, I picked up my CFI waiting on the ground and we departed towards Addison airport. Over Lake Hubbard I called into Regional Control. Normally, they would give me a squawk code for my transponder and direct me towards to the airport but today was different. The controller was very busy diverting traffic away from Addison. There was an airplane that (apparently) had a rough or fast landing without brakes and went off the runway. Nobody got hurt and his aircraft survived. It was a bit of a non-issue really except all of us in the sky had to circle around, land in other places or come back later. The runway was shut down for at least 10 minutes.

So we flew to the north DFW area over Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Aero Country and north of that in an area I call the North Practice Area. Oh fond memories. :-)

We did some practice turns and practiced traffic avoidance with the navigation system. After a while, Addison opened so we went straight in from the North, landed beautifully, taxied to the hangar and that's where I saw Rusty waiting for me.

My instructor* cut my shirt up, three instructors signed & decorated the shirt tail and tacked it up on their wall. It's going to stay at the flight school a few days for others to see. Call it inspiration to other students and discovery flight visitors.

So what's next??

I will review cross country planning and navigation with Rusty, do an hour of ground time at the school to review, get questions answered, and prepare for my first solo cross country. Before I do a cross country, I'll go up to do maneuvers around the lake area solo. That should be easy enough. Maybe next week if the weather is good I'll go up for maneuvers.

yay!!

*My primary instructor cut a small patch off my shirt then Patrick corrected that and cut a gigantic patch off my back. The giant patch of shirt is at the school. The humble signed patch is in my flight bag and will likely travel with me from now on.